


THE PRESSURE IN OUR BODIES

by pressforward



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, Domestic, F/F, Grimbark, Grimdark, Post-Sburb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 16:49:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1122206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pressforward/pseuds/pressforward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Sburb, Jade and Rose help each deal with their eldritch woes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	THE PRESSURE IN OUR BODIES

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bzahhh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bzahhh/gifts).



You find her in the kitchen along with the deepest reaches of the ocean. It fills her eyes and comes dripping out of her mouth like brackweed tangling in the tides, and this is _not_ just how she is before her morning coffee, you know better, you know _so much_ better. So when she turns towards you, eyes illuming from the inside (and you can’t help but think ‘anglerfish’), you flatten your ears and stomp your foot at her.

“Rose Lalonde, you cut that out this instant!”

She blinks, long and slow, and her eyes clear up, but her skin keeps its ashy pallor. You snap your fingers in front of her face, and she scowls, shoos you away.

“Gxhg jtwt!”

You sigh and reach for her hands, twine her cool fingers in your own, and the smokey tendrils rising from her skin wisp around you. “Rose, you’re in the throes again.”

“Mmprgh,” is all she says, rolling her eyes, and you don’t think that was the eldritch talking. So you kiss her on the forehead and go to make a fresh pot of coffee. The pot is full of tentacles and teeth, which is really super gross. You rinse it out twice with extra soap and the hottest water you can manage. When she comes slumping around you and pours herself a cup, black with one sugar, you brush out the last wisps of shadow from her hair. She takes a sip and sticks her tongue out at you when you say her hair’s gone tacky. You kiss her on the nose, at the edge of each lined eye, you love her so much.

=>ROSE

She snarls in her sleep sometimes, baring a frequently startling array of dentistry, and you do not envy anyone the job of operating on those. Not that either of you know if there are dentists in this new world; it is a puzzle, and hardly one that clamors for a solution. There are other things to investigate: the source of all your fresh water, for one, and what exactly is the food that you find at the grocery store, and why your fellow faceless humanoid shoppers occasionally remind you of someone you once knew. You’ve not been able to find the answer to the last, despite frequent debate over dinner.

Occasionally, Jade irradiates a steak, for old time’s sake, and when she does, you are often too busy watching her to enjoy your own meal, let alone pursue purely philosophical contentions. If you were a doctor, you’re sure you would be much more curious about the peculiarities of her body chemistry, the exact methods by which your beautiful friend, your dearest love, breaks down and overcomes raw and nuclearly impregnated meat, but you are content to simply watch.

She never has a steak after one of the dreams that makes her kick and occasionally bark in her sleep; only occasionally are the results more profound. Once, she teleports herself away, _in her sleep_ , for a good three days. When she comes back, she grins and says, “Wow, that is a way bigger world than I thought!” and you dab Neosporin on the cut on her chin. You find burrs and leaves in her hair, and you’re hard-put to come up with a way for a Witch of Space to be so hopelessly entangled. She sighs and tilts her head; you scratch behind her ears. When you touch a sore spot, she woofs, a little gruffly, and mostly under her breath. You stroke her cheek until her shoulders relax, then turn your attention to arranging the detritus into something a little more artful.

And all the next day, she sulks. She always does, and pretends that she isn’t; you usually refrain from reminding her that you know better. You hardly begrudge her the sulks, despite the highly distracting warped pockets of space shifting in and out of existence. There is very little you _wouldn’t_ do for her, and besides, she is so patient with you during your own episodes of the eldritch sort. This can be worrisome, as they’ve only been getting worse.

You had thought that ascending in the Green Sun had burned every trace of darkness out of you, but you’re beginning to suspect it just cast deeper shadows. The spells hit harder. You’re starting to lose control, and you _never_ lost control before. It is worrisome. You have dreams of starless expanses, a tar-sticky emptiness that sucks you in, swallows you whole. Sometimes you wake up to Jade with her ears flat, eyes wide, hand raised and empty glass rolling on the sheets. You blink away water and visions of reaching tendrils and teeth, and wait.

“Oh good,” she says. Then she lies down beside you and shakes as your cheeks begin to sting.

You suspect that these times, you wake her from her own nightmares. When the throes come for you in the day or even the dim early hazes of twilight, she is ever ready and only frowns at you, snaps her fingers like the eldritch darkness is a recalcitrant pet she can call to heel. You make no jokes about any irony, existent or otherwise. She has been snapping her fingers more, and will resort to bodily picking you up and throwing you down on the most comfortable couch you’ve both been able to make, with your ingenuity and inventories combined. There, she will sit on you, stroking your cheek, waving away the darkness, until you recollect yourself and shake off the throes.

And they are such stubborn throes, but she straddles you, holds you with such fire in her gaze that it could frighten you. As you awaken, you remember that fire, you remember that Sun, remember burning over and over and over again as you ascend, each fatal conflagration neither heroic nor just. Her eyes burn with the same steady power, and you lean into her hands -her warmth-, you run your hands up her thighs and smile; you are never afraid.

=>JADE

Sometimes you feel like fingers are digging into your brain again, rewiring everything but the most essential part of you. Except, okay, rewiring was more like Jane’s thing; you’ve been thinking that maybe it’s more like that thing trolls do with their spaceships and, well… other trolls. You hate the idea of feeling like a spaceship. There are nights when you dream that you’ve grown into the battleship, that you are accelerating at exactly the speed of light into disaster, and everyone you love is onboard. If Rose is already gone by the time you thrash yourself out of sleep, it’s hard to get out of bed.

You like Rose’s fingers, though. You like kissing their tips and licking frosting out from between the creases and holding her hand still ink-stained, like the violin calluses and the soft, capable palms. You like how she is careful when brushing your hair, and how very gently she strokes your cheek with the back of her hand; it gives you the shivers.

You don’t like how bleakly she looks at her clever, talented fingers sometimes, after the smoke dissipates and you zap the zoological oddity way back into the far reaches.

“You know,” she says, after the latest incident, and you are trying to find the air freshener that doesn’t sting your nose, “I could say I didn’t mean to do that, but I will admit that on some level, it was… it was a relief.”

“Rose, it’s okay! Sometimes these things just happen. Remember when I got Dave stuck in a tree?” You keep rooting around under the sink, and nearly miss her laugh.

“Well, that. That was different. Rest assured, though: I also have very little inclination to crack snausages jokes at your expense, however amusing the idea may seem at the time.”

“Hmmmmm.” You peek back at her, and she is looking at her hands. You swat her ankle. “I guess I will believe you about the jokes for now, but I’ve got my eye on you, missie! Don’t think you’ll get off that easy.”

Her mouth curves, tucks up high and secretive at the corners, and she is trying not to laugh the way you’ve seen her laughing in the glow of the computer screen, touching base with John and Dave. You grin broadly at her, and she covers her mouth and raises her eyebrows, then slips out of the room. She laughs so easily, your dear sweet rosebud. She also hates when you call her that, so you save it for very special occasions. Like when she has a dark heavy book in her hands, and the deep rich brown of her skin is blanching to ash and soot. Those are the worst ones, but you can usually tell from even across the house. Sometimes it's a funny little prickle you get at the back of your neck, but your usual tip-off is the windows startling to rattle, like-

Like they're doing now. Two in one day, oh, this is bad.

You scrabble up and nearly trip over your own feet lunging out of the bathroom. You latch onto the doorframe, and squirt her with the pet-safe raspberry air freshener. “Throes-bud!”

She drops the book and you drop the air freshener to throw your arms around her, whisk her away to the kitchen where you can maybe make her some tea. Not coffee, not now. Scotch? Is that what people use? Nah, tea, with three big spoonfuls of honey, or at least that’s what you’ve always believed! Before you can turn away, though, she reaches up, tangles her fingers in your hair. So you stay, and hold her.

Oof, but the smell of raspberries is overwhelming from this angle. You can feel the sneeze building up and turn aside just in time. The floor feels like it jumps, and you shake your head. That one was a doozy. You turn back to beam at Rose. No harm, no foul!

“Jade,” she says, trying to find the right balance between amused and stern. At least, you think it’s stern, but you also thinks she’s joking. Did you get boogers on her? You hope not!

You start to search her shoulder frantically, but she’s looking past you, towards where, as it turns out, the cups and plates from breakfast are levitating exactly a foot and a half above the table. Embarrassed, you wave them down. Even more embarrassing: there’s the heavy crunch of the house settling back as well! Really? Did that really happen?

“That’s so ridiculous!” you yell, at nothing in particular. Probably at the ceiling. You try not to tug your ears or pull your hair. Ugh, that’s so five years ago! All of it! Everything! You had it all under control and then these DREAMS came sliding back in, god, you hate them SO MUCH!!!

Rose’s hand slides in, smooth and still a little cooler than usual. She wipes her thumbs along your cheeks, and you blink. No, you’re not crying, but ow, ow, ow, you’re pretty close. You sniffle, and she kisses your chin very gently, she puts her arms around your waist and squeezes. You wipe your eyes and blink hard. You’re here for Rose.

“It’s okay. I’m okay.”

“I know you are,” she says, nestling in close and leaning up until she can murmur into the corner of your mouth; she warms you all the way through, and you curl in around her as she tightens her arms around you. “I know.”

You breathe her in, and believe her.

=>ROSE

Today, it’s Jade’s turn to fix the living room.

Rather, it’s always Jade’s turn to fix the room even when she isn’t the one who breaks it; fixing is more her bent than yours, and she gets it done much faster. When the nightmares become too cloying, too thickly settled in the walls and floors and tiresome spaces beneath the bed and chairs and couch, it’s your turn to decide where to move, and it always will be.

It is also always your turn to decide where to move the furniture, after Jade resurrects the walls, smoothes down the flooring and glares the gouges in the wall back into a semblance of repair. Tomorrow, after she does the final checks and proclaims it sound, you will draw up a floor plan, and you will both shift it back into place yourselves, with only hands and curses and occasional smashed toes, for the simple satisfaction of a backache. You do not complain -such petty endeavors are beneath you-, but you remark upon the proceedings in such a way as to make Jade roll her eyes and laugh.

But that is for tomorrow. Tonight, she is asleep almost instantly, tired from the relapse and repair. It tires her, for all her strength; it wears her down, and all she can think to do after the shaking subsides is to continuously look over her nails and palms, checking and rechecking for dark nails and thick pads. Her hands lie softly curled before her now, rough square palms a dusty brown against the rest of her skin. You lie beside her, and cannot sleep.

You are both full to bursting with all the things that made you, and continue to do so. Nearly, you cannot breathe: you are filled with zoological oddities and your friends and a grim, dark power that winds thick and heavy along your bones, have eyes and a head filled with light. There is a depth to the shadows in the bedroom that calls to you, beckoning. You shut your eyes, but you can feel your bones answer, you can feel their yearning and their assent writhing out of you.

You can’t breathe.

Then Jade sighs in her sleep beside you, flings her arm out and on top of you , and everything comes rushing out of you in a startled huff, breath and all. The deepness recedes, leaving only shadows of the more ordinary sort. She smacks her lips and starts to snore. You manage, by some herculean feat of pure will and flexibility, to wriggle a hand up and tickle the ear furthest from you.

She murmurs, flicks her ear, and finally rolls back over. As she sighs and settles back into dreaming, she is mercifully silent. You curl up against her, press your face between her shoulderblades and your lips against her spine. Tonight, you will both be fine. And tomorrow, together, you can continue to rebuild.


End file.
